BONGO CAT sur SMARTPHONE ! (Making-of)

Yo! Welcome to this making-of episode That's it, I created a game for smartphones a small application

I told you in a trailer last week It's based on Bongo Cat, it's a fun and colorful mini game It's available on the PlayStore and we'll talk about it at the end of the video So, you need to know that you can also create such a game Well yes, it requires logic and patience

A lot of patience But you can do that too believe me In fact this episode is going to explain how I managed to do it, the ideas I had, how I designed the gameplay, how I made the drawings, the animations etc Anyway, it's gonna be a making-of of this game And you do not need IT knowledge at all to watch this It's going to be a truely "peacefull" episode Ok, let's go ! Let's see how I made this first Ackanir app App-ckanir ? Oh men, I start to put my name everywhere, like batman you know The bat-grappling etc So I started this project about 1 week ago To do this i decided to use a software called Clickteam fusion Which allows to creates small games like this one quite easily, without knowing how to code Ok, to be honnest it usually costs about 100$, but I personally purchased it a few years ago for less than 10 euros When I started to create this games I had the idea to make a "game jam"

That is to say : do like in one of these competitions with a limited time to create a game, and with some constraints It can last from a few days to weeks, with many different types of constraints I choosed one, we'll talked about it in a minuit and I wanted to archive all this in a week or so And it was not easy at all

So what about the constraint ? I wanted to use Bongo Cat If you don't know what it is, it's this meme we see everywhere on the internet for the last few weeks It's a cat which basically plays music whatever he founds So why Bongo ? Well I don't know He was everywhere, and I just love this thing It was pretty inspiring

So I decided to use it Anyways, the first step was to look for gameplay ideas ie how am I going to use this cat ? So obviously Bongo Cat is related to music

So I immediately had tons of "cliché" ideas I could have created something like guitar hero, or piano tiles and so on But it really was not the goal

And even if I absolutely wanted to avoid that, my first idea was to create a game based on a rhythm The gameplay idea was very simple: the cat is moving on its own, and you have to turn right or left according to the music I especially liked this idea because this cat has 2 paw so he could press 2 buttons which correspond to right or left But quickly I realized that there were problems with this idea First, synchronizing is not an easy task We have to allow the player to turn right or left a little early or a little late and this is messing with the "rhythm" gameplay idea It's hard to stay in sync and catch up when needed

I also realized that this gameplay was not so funny so that's why it's really important to make a first prototype to quickly test your ideas for real So I decided to go for a totally different gameplay And the only idea that I kept of all that is the cat pressing the two keys Mostly because it's so cute and I think it's working rather well By the way, working with some constraints is also great It gives new ideas that we would not have had otherwise

So I made a new quick prototype with very basic shapes, with the interactions I imaginated And yeah, it was rather simple, I just added two three obstacles to test my gameplay ideas So as you can imagine, I had so little time to work and this idea seems to work well So I kept it And once I had this basis, I started to add things one by one as new ideas were coming After the solid obstacles I added other ones crossing the screen And then, for example, collectables giving a few points Then I wanted to add other types of obstacles

I added rotating ones which kills you Then lava Then fire! And finally breakable blocks releasing small particles when we break them So as you can see at this point we have our gameplay basis I really made this with basic shapes that allowed me to test if that was really working and if it was playable

And you see I did not bother with the graphics I really put squares and circles It took me like 30 seconds to draw them using paint It was more than enough And this is perfect to do a small transition to the next point Once I had these basic ideas I started to think about the way my game should look At this moment I had no idea of ​​the visual part and what I wanted So I spent some time on the internet, I downloaded other games I took a look at there graphical style, what was available and what inspires me

And I finally choose the cartoon style : something cute and colorful With some sort of 3D drawings, like in a few other games In particular drawings like in Clash of Clans and so on Even if yes, they are way better than mine So the first thing to do was the easiest one

It was basically the UI with the cat pressing the keys, buttons, etc And once I was done with that, the title screen and the logo of the application, I really started to think about the obstacles we encounter while playing And here what is interesting is the fact that the gameplay determines what do we do visually It's a bit like in Mario: Goombas have this triangular shape so you want to jump on them Same thing for the turtles which is an enemy that moves And once we jumped on it there is only a shell left, which doesn't move If Mario is a plumber, it's because teleporters are the pipes, etc

We could really make a long list like this So next time someone tells you, "Woaw, Mario is a totaly stupid game, he's a plumber who jumps on turtles and so on The devs were on drugs ? " You will be able to explain him why (I'm such a killjoy) So this is how I ended up with cactuses for the obstacles you have to avoid Then for the breakable blocks I used fences that are pretty thin and easy to break And I think the most relevant are the obstacles moving through the screen, since I decided to change them into moles

So then I did all these drawings on Photoshop, with some help and inspiration from other styles, of course But it was really not that easy to do especially for someone like me, as Photoshop and drawing is really not my job But concerning the UI for example we can save time since many people shared drawings packs online (they share it freely on Internet) And I really want to thank these people

It helps a lot in this kind of project But I'm sure it still allowed me to try out many different things especially with Photoshop I had no idea how to create animations using it But it's actually pretty close to what can be done with video editing Do I need to specify what I use video editing for ? And all this mess took me a really, REALLY long time

I almost had to create 160 individual pictures for the game And it's not over! Because once that you did all the drawings using Photoshop, you have to export everything and import it back into the game Yeah you may have designed your buttons, but you still need to write all the code to animate it when you press it ect

Same thing to make the different elements appear on the title screen In short this was in insane amount of work to do Aside to it, I thing this is the moment I was reaching the limitation of Clickteam Fusion Yes, I was able to create simple animations, but it was kind of tricky every time So it was not so good It would be probably easier with engines such as Unity It would also be way faster, and maybe quite easier And to be honest during this week of dev, I encountered several bugs And this was not very pleasant, especially since I had no time to take care of that So at this point I really have the gameplay basis, images along with it, and it really gives a good idea of what the game is going to be

It's playable, I tested it a bit on my phone to see how it was And I started to finalize it For example, I added a count down at the beginning of each level to be able to start or resume the game easily So you have a bit of time to move your fingers back after clicking a button And more generally it feels like it's a pretty simple game but there is really lots of small things that I had to think about to make it work An example for example: notes

An example for example Well yes For example the musical notes are there to really give yourself a new challenge And these notes can be placed in 2 ways If they are in the middle of a path it can tell you a direction to take But on the other side if they are a bit aside it gives you a challenge

So if you already struggle you don't have to care about it and you avoid them You go straight to the end But on the other hand if you are a little better you can start again to try to catch those notes It gives some re-playability which is pretty cool Well, an other example : I placed fences at the begging of the first level you encounter them So you can not dodge them, you have to go through and breaks them

And since it is absolutely the only obstacle you can break in this game you understand the way it works Yeah because at first, that's no intuitive at all So I had to do that Last thing I did and I did not mentioned, was all the sound design part Which is not so funny so I'm not going give more details

And again, when I started to look for some sounds, or right free musics to use, I came across the worst ones That's a game, not a Youtube tutorial So we had to find something that match the game and that's not a big "cliché" So that's it, that was the story where I created a mini game without having to much knowledge And especially how I ended up with thousand of things to do on my list Things that I did not planned at all Yeah, I wanted to do it only in the evening, but I ended up spending days on it I hope that this video allows you to understand the previous one

Where I told you that I was aware it would take some time, but I was not expecting this I knew I was going to spend a bit of time, but not that much So as I told you so at the beginning of this video: this app is now available on the Android Playstore And no, it is not on Apple's one Yeah I like my community, but having to pay 100$ a year so the app stay publish

No, thanks Well, to be honest at the time Google has still not validated the application But there is no reason for it to be blocked so you should have the link directly in descriptions

And if there really is a problem ,do not hesitate to come back I will specify what's going on I really hope you found this rather interesting That made me crazy because I also had exams at the same time so adding this workload was a total madness But I'm really happy with this game So it was only a quick overview of this project

Do not hesitate to tell me if you want a second episode where we really go into technical details, to see how it works I think there's a lot left and it can be very interesting So do not hesitate to tell me if you're interested I personally think that was an awesome project I have final something to give you, something that you can try

So do not hesitate to test it and to give me feedback I really hope you like it Well, it's time for me to get back to work I'll see you soon for the next video Stay tuned if you do not want to miss this